


Bits and Pieces

by w3djyt



Category: Bleach
Genre: Drabble Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:39:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w3djyt/pseuds/w3djyt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles focusing on the Byakuya/Renji relationship throughout the Bleach manga. Typically, these are shorter ficlets originally posted to my tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rumors

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a musing response to the themes I’ve noticed throughout a lot of ByaRen fic… that, somehow, Byakuya is completely oblivious to the world of rumors and people’s beliefs and expectations of him. Likewise, I’ve noticed a trend towards Renji blathering on about his personal life - especially pertaining to his captain - to, well, a lot of people. I can’t see them being involved and Renji being at all open about it - even positively.

If there was one thing Renji had learned over his years in the Court of Pure Souls, it was that people had very … active imaginations. Rumors, it seemed, could fly faster and grow stronger than any shinigami could dream of - and the less was known the more it was talked about. This didn’t particularly strike him until he joined sixth division and the litany of inquiries that came from those who wanted to be in the know on Soul Society’s most prominent noble poured in. It was subtle at first, when Shirogane was still fairly well known and people within the division were more comfortable talking with the likable former vice captain than to the brash replacement from eleventh. 

There had been a tipping point, though. Sometime after they realized he was more useful for training than either their current captain or previous vice captain, but well before any ill conceived attempts at treason. And it was then that the questions began.

“Does he really cut his hair with his zanpakutou?”

“Is he really friends with Kusajishi-Fukutaichou?”

“I heard he actually keeps sweets in a desk drawer even though he doesn’t like them.”

“Ne, Fukutaichou~!”

Some of the ones, of course, were just… amusing. 

He could still remember the barely dry expression that briefly crossed Byakuya’s features upon asking about the slew of rumors he overheard or directly laughed in the face of each day. For someone so worried over his reputation, his captain remained rather impressively unconcerned over the rumors in constant proliferation over topics as innocuous as what foods he enjoyed and his supposedly non existent alcohol tolerance. The later, of course, Renji had pestered him over for nearly a month before waking up one morning with a hazy memory of the night before and a more smug than normal Kuchiki Byakuya driving him mercilessly through division drills and an unscheduled spar in an apparent attempt to beat the hangover out of him.

Renji wasn’t about to complain about it. Not about the horrendously incorrect musings on the noble’s private life, or the repercussions that always followed his too amused commentary on some of the juicier rumors shared behind the privacy of closed doors with the very man the Seireitei rumor mill could never properly ignore. He never tried to correct much, although a boisterous laugh was enough of a an answer for many, and enough to make them keep asking. And though he made the time to correct his  _own_  reputation, Byakuya certainly didn’t need him to defend his honor - over the man’s choice in attire or whatever supposed indiscretions he was secretly a part of. 

He was privileged enough to know the truth in the first place, and if there was one thing they could be said to share in values it was a sense of privacy in their personal lives and the want to uphold the respect of those in it. 


	2. Time and Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a brief ByaRen drabble about what might happen should they both pass on from the Blood War.

One time they met at work. Some forced holiday function that neither were too keen on attending; the elder for lack of want to socialize and the brash new upstart because he’d rather have been enjoying himself somewhere else for the evening. It seemed the gentleman of upper management had a soft spot for his wife, however, and given enough drink was eventually cajoled into sharing a picture always on his person. His new hire returned the gesture with cell phone pictures of himself and his friends on excursions and it wasn’t long before the two made a pact to vouch for the other so they could sneak out the back and return to both for the rest of the night.

It was a shaky start, but it grew as these things do. A soul never really forgets another soul - no matter the life and no matter the circumstances of the new one. And so, in this one, it was as friends and confidants that they spent their lives. The younger man playing uncle to each child that lit up the faces of the older man and his adoring wife; the elder drawing one of the few people he could call friend through the transitions in their lives - the jobs, the moves, the subtle push for the other to find someone as well. To be as happy as his own family made him. 

But a soul never forgets. 

This time, family was a wife and three children loved so completely for the phantom of loss buried in the age of his spirit. And family was his most trusted acquaintance who played with his children when he could not, who happily befriended his wife and watched his back and covered for him when an unknown pang bid him to place family before work. And to that man, whose life would be spent apart of others’ families, there was no loss or loneliness. He lived passionately and loved wholly and died content.

Death was familiar. 


	3. Layers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renji's change in hairstyle over the 17 month gap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I could think was “oh god, that’s gotta be layered”, followed by “did he seriously go to a salon or something? omg.” Much as I can see Renji actually taking care of his hair to that extent, I thought drunken antics and Yumi’s pretend-shikai were more fun XD

It all started with an off handed comment. Of course, knowing his captain, it was anything but off handed. If Renji didn’t know better, he might’ve thought Kuchiki Byakuya rather bored and thus deciding to say something just for the sake of seeing what he’d do. Of course, he did know better - all chillingly faint not-really-there smirks aside - and decided to grouse about the indignity of being questioned about the battle worthiness of his increasingly long mane by a man who had traded in a ridiculously expensive (and completely unneeded) scarf for frilly gold tassels. 

There was, of course, alcohol and a few decent drinking companions to go with. 

Thus, Renji wasn’t quite sure  _how_  it happened, so much as he was pretty damn sure it involved Yumichika and possibly a drunken brawl. Any way he looked at it, though, he couldn’t complain. Much as he wouldn’t admit it, Yumi did good work. Even when heavily inebriated and quite possibly giving haircuts with his zanpakutou. “Layering” was it? Well, it still pulled back easily, and it _was_  lighter now… But perhaps most importantly, his captain had absolutely nothing to say about it.

Although Renji was starting to wonder if that little facial twitch counted as a smirk.


	4. Learning To Appreciate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have”  
> ― Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

It’s been many long years since he found himself on dirt streets. He can’t remember being alone: only that he’s grown to fear it. The world of his past is made of fleeting hunger, where death rules not by suddenness, surety and constant presence, but in military black and imperial white and walks the streets in austere airs and looming, monstrous power. It is made of loss. It is rough hewn crosses of wood to mark the beginning of a new life he knows he’ll never understand. The past is the past, he’s learned, and even turning around can’t bring it back.

So he moves forward.

His present is made of voices; so many more than he’s ever had before. They sound in boisterous laughs that tease and taunt and cajole him to drink. They grumble and mutter and growl in the back of his head, teeming with energy, with eagerness, with frustration. On mornings he likes to remember, a low one murmurs to wake him and at times he wants to forget falls to icy silence. Sometimes the voices are together and sometimes they are separate, but never once has he been left completely alone since he entered this world of imperial white walls, marched in the black army, fought and bled and learned what the monsters feared. 

His future lays itself blood-beaten and endless before him; an impossible tangle of red ribbon.

 ---

It’s been many long years since he found himself on dirt streets. She is a fay thing glimmering softly in the filth and unceasing heat at the edges of his perception. The world of his past is made of routine (it’s called tradition), death (we do not fear it), restraint (like the heart of a god), loneliness (we should not shed tears), and meter (treading alone). It is made of loss. It is the handcrafted wood of the family shrine and faded pictures of loved ones lit by low, flickering candles. The past is unreachable, no matter the power he accumulates nor the remnants he surrounds himself with.

So he marches on.

His present is made of color. It’s stuck intermittently between imperial white and military black in shocks of familiar amethyst and unruly red. It is rocked and torn apart by a blaring, intractable orange. On mornings he’s not certain aren’t dreams, it’s a blur of carmine in slants of warm light. It is an unwieldy thing; bright and alarming and all too chaotic for the carefully set metronome he’s long since learned to pace himself to. It is soft petals of pink and the tainted purity of white and black that are shorn by the deceptive blades. 

His future is a slim, white path through shadow, and he walks it with unerring precision and grace. 


End file.
